IS MAN A FAILURE?

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 662, 12 November 1909, Page 11

IS MAN A FAILURE?

VIGOROUS REf>LV TO WOWEN CRITICS, __AflNiNof γ-rqm the past. ' A modest ntid pqthetio appeal for moro considorato view, of man on tho part of the ndvanccd woman is entered by Mr. Harold Owen in an artiolo in toe "Diuly Cbionicle." It is by tho way of icply to lladume Saral* Grand's contention that man is tt hopeless failure, and that women should ccaso to rontirino. tho hated species, that Mr. Owen\timidly suggests that man should bo given moro time— a four thousands or millions of j oars—in which to progress tow aids that ■, distant goal of perlectiou which ho fam hopes to roach some day. We kuoir, says Mr. Onen, that tho whole struggle of miin sinco ho emerged from the mijts of his pnmihvD state his been towards ccirccting the imperfections"of human nature, tovards the development of a conscience, individual and social; towards good go\eminent anil humane laws and increasing social obligations, towards acutcr cUncal pcrcoptious—in shirt, towards the light and further away from the darkness into which ho was born, but out ot which he can perhaps never wholly emerge The fundamental mistake that Madame Grand makes is to regard the age in which sho happens to live as a culminating point, whereas it may prove to bo, before the end of the story is reached, moroly one of this early chapters of a marvellous book. She sees neither past nor futiue, but the present only. Sho looks round on an imperfect world, and does not ask herself whether it is better than it used to be, shll less whother it is going to be better still; but because in the span of her'own ago and oxponenco sho discerns no lnillenial accomplishments, she imagines that the process of evolution has suddenly stopped. A little more imagination, or perhaps a little less, might havo suggested to her 'that. tho process of evolution in the moral nature of man must bo as slow as that which has taken piano in his physical nature, and that -as aeons noro necessary to turn the anthropoid ape into man, ■-.o aeons may be necessary to turn him into tho Superman; But, taking her on her own and accepting the theory that (ho world, as it is, is past praying for and nit worth living in, let me challonge her assumption that man is responsible for it all—that,he is a failure, gross and jnbvious, and dussmng nf tto contompt ct woman. Consider his beginnings Ho is of \ery bumble origin, and entirely oelf-taught since ho broke away from his airy, quadraioanous, tree-sumging stock and learned i tho stgmuoaucc of Ins wonderful thumb, and I bogau to make tools for himself—a self-made man, indeed, entirely, after the first divmo impulse which started him on his career at all, and sent.him spinning clown the ages and loft him to work out his earthly dcbtiny It is really not so very long ago since he used a 3tono nxebead as the only au lliarv to .hisgunning and .strength, nud it pioljablv took him a century or two to disco\Cr what an advantage it would bo if an axe h'ad a handle. And it is only )ust the other side of recorded history since the paleolithic European had for his contemporaries tho woolly rhlndcords and tho c&vo bear. 'And'-from the -very first the "struggle for hfp" began, and it snroly savs something for , tho good part of him that he has developed a conscience nnd a sense of sympathy and justice in the face of that struggle—a etrugglo which makes selfishness natural and seta a premium on the law of tooth and olaw. What he , is to-day he is by his own endeavours, aDd if, as being tho predominant and governing sex, ho must bo held responsible for the imperfections of the world, ho must bo allowed credit for the progress he lias made sinco he shared a cave with woman, and went out to stun their dmner and brought it home for her to cook. i It may be, of course, that in. civilising him. self he has crane altogether on tho wrong tack, and that yhat Madaino Grond calls his "socalled civilisation" is merely the lingo monu-1 ment of his failure But to contend that is 1 to deny the vholo process of evolution, and to sot us uilproutabfy moving in a circle of unfathomable attractions AJI that one can hurablv say is that man IS gradually doing his best with the materials prottded for him—himself, woman, and nature—and that tho progress he hns eo far made in self culture warrants his belief in himself oven if v omaii has lost her faith in him For, attor all, /he has prevailed not only in tho pnjscnl nnd governing spheres, but in the moral sphorc. tpor-ho has Leon behind overv human impulse foi the'-hettoriHetit of his race.

n'i i>l I E T eat e , t11, ,T f ™ c ''o« from Aristotle and Plato down to Sidgwick nud Spencei, have been contoinptible" men-man and not woman lias crcaipd thnt immense moral forco, a public nr Ai i l lh,n ii bo w, " kp "^rf° Zn ~ I y i ■•haming tho peswmsts of l m own m>!, 1 ami nor'mps in the or.d he m»v prM« ,?„. " 1? "J ?r\ h,s his aspir,,. mate' SLy. , is bott ° r than hls »>*••